Homework That Pays You

10 Ways To Use Facebook Live for your Small Business

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Facebook Live lately—I bet you have even seen user generated videos popping up all over your Facebook timeline, too, right?

Last August, I wrote about how Facebook Live wasn’t a real streaming contenter…yet! But it’s made some major strides since last summer.

Let’s Review: What’s Facebook Live, and What Makes It So Great?

Facebook Live allows you to share real-time video directly from your smartphone, letting your viewers see whatever your phone’s camera is filming. While you can’t see or hear the people who are watching, your audience can type messages to you in real time.

Your live video gets displayed right in your viewers’ Facebook timelines, along with everything else they care about and follow. This allows for some amazing access to your followers!

There are some limits, though. Facebook Live isn’t available for all business pages…yet. Right now, it’s only available on personal profiles in the U.S. who have iPhones and to those that have blue-verified fan pages.

But I have a feeling Facebook will be rolling it out to all fan pages before we know it!

Bottom line…start learning now how your business can utilize this amazing resource.

Here Are 10 Ways To Use Facebook Live For Your Small Business

1. Give your followers a peek behind the scenes of your business.

People love to feel like insiders and get some insight into how your business really works!

This is a great opportunity to show some personality as a business owner. What’s a typical day like for you as a business owner? Do you have a favorite morning routine you swear by? Or maybe give a behind the scenes tour of your office!

The possibilities are endless and this content will be unique, because you and your business are one of a kind.

2. Show everyone a slice of your “real life”.

Especially if you’re a personality-driven brand, this is a great way to share your life outside of your business: your pets, your new home renovation, your gardening projects, etc. Use it as a time to connect with your followers as a real, live person. Remember, people are going to connect with you as a person before they connect with you around your business, product or service!

People will connect with you as a person before they connect around your business!

3. Hold a live Q&A.

Since anyone who’s watching your Facebook Live stream can type a message that will immediately show up on your screen, it’s a great tool to answer your followers questions, in real time!

It’s value based to your tribe and you don’t have to do a ton of advance preparation. The best part is that it is happening live, which strengthens the connection between you and your community.

This is also a handy tool for some research! What is your audience most curious about? What problems do they need your help solving? Make sure you’re tuned into what your audience needs to know during these Q&As, and you’ll have some serious marketing ideas right at your fingertips.

4. Be the teacher! Your Facebook followers can be your students.

If you sell products, give a demonstration or a tutorial. If you sell services, give everyone a preview of what’s working for you.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world after Google, in large part because people love to learn from videos. Use Facebook Live to share some content with your audience on a topic that you know will resonate with them. Prepare a short video teaching your followers something useful, and watch those Facebook shares go crazy!

5. Share your take on current events or developments in your niche.

As a business owner, you probably make it a priority to stay informed about new developments in your field. You’re probably also very in-tune with current headlines that are sure to pique your followers’ interest. So, share your opinion about it! What’s your take?

Your chosen topic might already be trending on Facebook if it’s a hot new story, so jump in while you can! When you summarize a news story that resonates with your followers and then give your analysis, it’s a powerful way to establish your authority and increase credibility.

6. Host interviews.

Who would your audience love to hear from? Is there someone else in your niche who can add value for your followers? Would it be fun to hear from some of your company’s employees?

You’ll want to keep in mind that you and the person you interview will need to be physically together, or you can use Skype while you point your camera at the computer screen. With a little planning, this can be very effective.

7. Show off your latest product or service.

Build some buzz when you showcase your brand new product or service. Depending on your product or service, you can demonstrate how it works or by sharing how it solves a pain problem they have. When you solve your customer’s pain points by providing them exactly what they are looking for, guess what happens? They buy :-)!

8. Broadcast a live event you’re attending.

Do you have plans to attend a conference in your field or visit a place your audience might enjoy? Let each of your followers be a fly on the wall, and use Facebook Live to broadcast everything you’re seeing so they get a sense of what it’s like to be there.

Make sure you still engage with your audience while you’re doing your walkthrough of your surroundings. Don’t forget—you can always answer the questions your followers are sending your way!

9. Share a Story From A Client or Customer.

Sharing a story or a testimonial that a client or customer has given is extremely powerful! There is an old saying that facts tell but stories SELL. This is sooo true. Additionally, in today’s marketplace, did you know that 92% of consumers listen and TRUST reviews from other consumers?

10. Repurpose Your Video.

Facebook Live automatically saves your video to your page for anyone who misses the live broadcast. But don’t forget to make the most out of your Facebook Live content! Could your video be turned into a powerful blog post, newsletter, or social media post? Don’t forget to upload it to YouTube!

Particularly if your broadcast really resonated with your audience, this is just the beginning!

Start Planning Now!

Well there ya go…10 Ways To Use Facebook Live For Your Small Business. If you begin planning now, you’ll be ahead of the competition when Facebook Live is available to you. It’s not too often you get your very own video channel that appears right in the newsfeed of your followers’ most-visited social media platform. I would love to hear from you…how do you plan to use Facebook Live for your small buiness?

http://kimgarst.com/10-ways-to-use-facebook-live-for-your-small-business

How To Get Over Your Fear Of Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

12

EmailShare

Recently I’ve been working with my buddy David Anderson, to put together a couple new blueprints on selling for our Location Rebel members.

When it comes to talking to people on the phone, this guy is the man.

This past week we were skiing together in Vail, Colorado – and rather than just showing nothing but gratuitous shots of us busting backflips in the terrain park, and plowing through acres of fresh powder – I figured I’d try and shoot something that might actually be useful to you.

So in this week’s vlog, along with a few shots of us on the slopes – David, our friend Madi, and I, each share our best tip for getting over your fear of selling – as well as tell the story of how each of us conquered our own fears in the process.

For those of you who who don’t want to watch the whole thing?

Here’s the Cliff Notes version:

Put yourself in a scenario where you have to sell.

Remember that everyone you’re talking to us a totally normal person, just like you.

Use the Pamphlet Principle to warm up your leads.

http://www.seanogle.com/vlog/get-over-your-fear-of-sales

Getting Your Garage-Based Business Back On Track

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Garage-based businesses have been the nuts and bolts start of some of today’s most recognized companies. If your garage-based business has begun to go in a direction that wasn’t planned, there are several ways to reinvent it and get it back on track. Use these tips in your revamp to get the right return on your investments.

Objective Inspection and Assessment
All businesses need regular reviews. If your startup business is based on a solid plan, to get it back on track, review the original business plan. This helps to see where you began to divert in direction or fall into hibernation.

Take an objective inspection of the location as well. Take note of changes since the business start-up. Since most garage-based businesses are part of a residence, and it is possible that visibility and impulse shopping have changed in your industry. Possibly the residential area is no longer as accessible to consumers. An objective assessment of these issues might turn up several ideas on how to get back on track.

Business Upgrades are Important
Garage-based business owners tend to overlook the need to annually upgrade their business processes and the methods they use to attract customers. Investing in the most sophisticated high tech equipment can make processes easier and attract more attention. For example, it may be helpful to upgrade computer systems and other business equipment if the existing equipment isn’t as expedient or ergonomic as it should be.

Make Your Business “Different”
While many entrepreneurs know their competition well, some try to keep pace with competitors’ ads and promotions and their newest products or services. Dig deeply into the purpose of your business to discover how goods and/or services can be presented differently to attract a wider target market to get the business back on track.

Take Stock of Your Appearance
Whether your business is service or product oriented, or both, the appearance of your work area speaks volumes about your business style. It’s important that business functions be performed in a safe place for employees and customers. This includes using Americord extension cord options instead of messy and jumbled outlets, hooks for tools, and a good aesthetic design that draws in repeat business.

Most business entrepreneurs choose a garage-based business for the convenience, as well as for the local target market. Building up a garage-based business and keeping it on track requires vigilance, maintenance, and keeping an eye on the ebb and flow of customers.

http://workinmypajamas.com/getting-garage-based-business-back-track/

How To Write A Business Plan In 6 Minutes - Template

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 00:55:00 +0000

FYI ........

8 Twitter Features That Will Make Your Marketing More Effective and Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Lately, I have been extremely impressed with Twitter. I don’t know about you, but to me it seems like they are really upping their game. In the last couple of months, they’ve added a bunch of features to their application that make social media marketing on Twitter have more of an impact and it’s also a lot more fun (hello video and live streaming!). By incorporating some of these new features into your Twitter use, you can keep your marketing strategy on point with the latest trends and add some zing to your social media marketing.

1. Twitter.com Homepage Redesign: Twitter updated its home page on the desktop, making it easier for people to see cool content even when they are not logged in. According to Twitter’s blog, “when you go to the twitter.com homepage, you’ll find interesting topics to explore like Politics, Pop Artists and even Cute Animals. Click on the topic and you’ll see a timeline of Tweets from some of the most popular accounts in that topic. It’s rich real-time content, just like the Twitter experience for users who log in.” For those times when you just don’t know what to share on Twitter, or for when you want to throw in some fun stuff, consider checking out the Twitter homepage for awesome content discovery.

2. Twitter Direct Messages Update: It used to be on Twitter that you could only DM someone who was following you, but Twitter just changed that. Now, you can DM anyone and receive DMs from anyone. (Of course, users have to “opt-in” to enable this feature in their Twitter settings.) For marketers and business owners, this is a great way to share exclusive content or offers with our followers, but we must be very judicious with this new feature; we don’t want to come off as spammy and risk losing the follower(s).

3. Twitter Trends: Another useful update for content discovery is the Twitter Trendsrefresh. Trends will now appear under the “Search” page and the “Discover” and “Activity” tabs will be retired. With this update, not only will you see trending content, but also helpful descriptions about the trend. Twitter explains, “Since trends tend to be abbreviations without context, like #NYFW, a description will make it clear that this trend is about New York Fashion Week. The new trends experience may also include how many Tweets have been sent and whether a topic is trending up or down.”

4. Retweets with Comments: We know it’s an important part of Twitter etiquette for marketers to share other people’s content…because it can’t be all about you or your business (although you are fabulous!). This is where the Retweet comes in. As part of a recent Twitter update, you can now use the “Quote Tweet” option to add your own comments to the original tweet. And…since marketing is highly visual these days, it’s a bonus that the Quote Tweet feature will pull in any rich media that was a part of the original tweet. Don’t forget that followers are drawn to tweets with images and are more likely to share these tweets; so be sure to use image and media with your tweets regularly.

5. Live Streaming with Periscope: Last week we wrote a blog post about the big splash live-streaming videos are making in the Twitter marketing world, especially with Periscope, and how marketers and business owners can incorporate video into their social media efforts. If you’re interested in jumping on the live video content bandwagon, be sure to check it out.

6. Native Twitter Videos: As I mentioned, visual content, especially video content, is very impactful in social media. A little while ago, Twitter rolled the ability to record and share videos right within the mobile app. This is another easy (and free!) way to start adding video content to your content creation. To learn more about it, check out our Twitter video post.

7. Quick Promote: One feature that is out is Twitter’s new “Quick Promote” feature that will allow business owners and marketers to promote a tweet that is already performing well in order to help that tweet reach a broader audience. Best of all, this action can take place right within your Twitter profile; no need to log in to Twitter analytics in order to set up the ad. Keep your eyes peeled for this option and leverage it in order to get your best tweets in front of a bigger audience.

8. New Analytics Homepage: Business owners and marketers are constantly wondering “Am I doing anything right on Twitter?” and the revamped Twitter analytics will help you discover just that. You’ll be able to see:

how many times you’ve Tweeted
how many people have seen your Tweets, visited your profile, mentioned your @username or followed your account
how many times people have shared links to your site (if you use Twitter Cards)
your top Tweets and followers with the largest network in any given month

Twitter advises, “Use this information to quickly share your best content with a wider audience, engage with your most influential followers, or as a starting point to do a deeper dive into your account performance.” By reviewing your analytics daily, you can look for patterns that point to the best practices for your business’ marketing strategy.

Between improved analytics, new advertising options, and new video content options, Twitter is making the social media landscape more exciting and valuable for business owners and marketers alike. I encourage you to check out one or two features (don’t try and do everything at once) and put them to the test for your business. If you’re seeing some exciting results or that one feature has an edge over another, don’t forget to share your insights. You can leave us a comment here on the blog, or tell us how things are going for you over on our Facebook Page or Twitter profile.

http://www.visualinspiration.com/blog/tuesday-tech-tips-8-twitter-features-that-will-make-your-marketing-more-effective-and-fun

The Top 7 Things NOT To Do When Starting A Business

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 22:45:00 +0000

Some useful tips to be aware of .........

3 Tips To Help You Keep Your Foot On the accelerator In Your Home Business

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

When it comes to building a home business one of the most important things to remember is to always have your foot on the accelerator at all times.

Why ?

Because once you take that foot off you are going to lose the speed, traction and momentum in your home base business, which is not at all a good thing to happen.

Watch the video below to understand the impact this can cause to your home business and 3 tips to overcome this.

3 Tips To Help You Keep Your Foot On The Accelerator In Your Home Business

If you are struggling to get Generate leads to your home business check out the 5 step blueprint that’s going to help you do exactly that with ease

TIP 1 Stay active during the holiday season

If you are on holiday don’t make that an excuse to not work on your home business.

What’s going to happen is when you take a few days off you are going to feel lazy to get back to work and the worst thing that can happen is if you take an extensive break you need to start all over again, which is not a very productive thing

But as you start marketing your business online you can easily manage and automate your content by using certain tools and mobile apps.

One of the methods I use to post on instagram is to use an app called crowdfire. Where I am able to schedule post as long as I want with few easy steps. To learn how I use this tool click the link below for my step by step training.

Tip 2 Always plan your work ahead

I am sure you would have heard that if you fail to plan. You are basically planning to fail.

So I am sure you don’t want that to happen right?

So the best thing is to plan ahead. It can be taking a day or two, I do this during the weekends planning what I need to be doing for the following week.

Basically what I do is organizing what content I need to produce for my videos/blog post and also creating images to be posted on instagram and other social media accounts.

Tip 3 – When building your home business don’t see it as stressful activity

The only reason you will see working on your home business as a stressful activity is when you fail to plan.

So make sure you do the planning accordingly which will result you in treating this as fun and enjoyable activity.

If you got value from this post on 3 Tips to help you keep your foot on the accelerator in your home business, please share this post and leave a comment

http://www.azamhamdoon.net/3-tips-to-help-you-keep-your-foot-on-the-accelerator-in-your-home-business/#more-680

What They Don't Teach In Business School About Entrepreneurship

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 22:48:00 +0000

How To Easily Shorten And Track Affiliate Links

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Keeping track of your affiliate links can be a pain, logging in and out of sites to get your links to share on social media or in blog posts.

Even if you’re a little more organized than that and keep them in a spreadsheet, chances are they look something like websitename.com/rioavtroi4923804982elklgh669.

AKA, ugly and not something you can easily memorize.

Don’t worry- we’ll fix that right up.

The 10-Minute Touch Up is a quick, weekly challenge to get you DOING, not just reading about doing. Consider it a way to touch up your blogging just 10 minutes at a time!

Challenge: Convert at least five affiliate links into pretty-looking links!

Why: You can easily write up messages to promote your affiliate links when all you have to remember is blogclarity.com/asmallorangeversus http://asmallorange.7eer.net/c/148780/185398/3107.

Plus, if you’re talking about a product or service on video (like Periscope), it’s so easy to say “just go to blogclarity.com/asmallorange).” BONUS: You can also use it to make custom links for your email signup page.

HOW TO DO IT

Use this nifty little plugin called Pretty Links. It’s only for WordPress (another reason to switch, eh?).

1. DOWNLOAD PRETTY LINKS.

You can buy the paid version – Pretty Links Pro – if you think you need it, but I’m good with the free version for now. Pro does let you automatically add affiliate links to certain keywords on your site, which is pretty slick. Whichever you pick, download and install.

2. COPY THE URL OF AN AFFILIATE LINK YOU WANT TO SHORTEN.

If I have to tell you how to copy a link…. well, you know what you do here. On to the juicy stuff…

3. CLICK ADD NEW LINK FROM THE PRETTY LINK SETTINGS.

This will be in your WordPress navigation.

4. THEN CLICK “ADD PRETTY LINK.”

Easy.

4. ENTER IN THE AFFILIATE DETAILS.

This part can look confusing at first, but it’s not bad! Here’s what you need to do.

Redirection type: Select 307 if you’re using an affiliate link. This one tells search engines the link may change and won’t pass along SEO link juice. If you’re using an affiliate link, you don’t want link juice passed along as it can hurt your site rankings (it’s essentially having a paid link– which is a big no-no).

Target URL: Paste the full affiliate link that you copied into this section.

Pretty Link: Name your link! Choose something really simple to remember.

Title: I just title it the name of the product or service I’m promoting.

Group: You can create groups of links, like categories. Good to do from the start if you’re planning on adding lots of links. I set them up from the Groups tab because I couldn’t get it to add new groups from this page.

SEO Options: If it’s an affiliate link, always select no-follow.

Parameter Forwarding: I don’t know what the hell that means so I skipped it.

Tracking Options: Do this so you can see how many times a link is clicked from your Pretty Links dashboard.

5. CLICK UPDATE TO SAVE YOUR LINK.

You can then click the clipboard underneath the link (see screenshot from step 4) and paste it wherever!

BOOM! THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE.

Easy, right?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

Share this post!

http://www.blogclarity.com/shorten-track-affiliate-links/

Recipe for Success: Ten WordPress Plugins to Rock Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Blogging with WordPress can be good fun with the right plugins. Plugins make work more comfortable, add new features, and can keep visitors on your blog. With the right plugin, blogging tasks can be performed in a smarter, easier, faster, and more productive way. Whatever you have in mind for your blog, there is probably a plugin for that. The only problem is that you will have to find the right one first, and with currently 35,038 listed plugins, this is tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack. To save you some time in the search, we provide you with ten extraordinary plugins for various tasks that will make your life a lot easier.

Your Recipe: These 10 WordPress Plugins

Newsletter Plugins – Collect Email Addresses

Email marketing shouldn’t be underestimated. If you want to live from the earnings of your blog, you should concentrate on email marketing from the beginning and offer high-quality newsletters with added value for the subscriber. To do so, you will need email addresses. There are different ways to collect them.

1. Scroll Triggered Box

The Scroll Triggered Box is a small box that pops up at a predefined place when scrolling down an article. With this box, you can’t only collect email addresses, but also integrate these Like buttons from social networks. For the latter task, however, there is a much better plugin. If you bother about newsletter marketing, this plugin is ideal for collecting email addresses.

Developer: pk2000, Eero Hermlin, etc.
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 17.12.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
Developer’s homepage: Scroll Triggered Boxes
Download from WordPress.org

2. The Hello Bar

The Hello Bar is a striking option to either point to the newsletter and collect email addresses or to send your visitors important messages. One significant advantage of the Hello Bar is its fixed position that keeps it in the view of your visitors. You will need two components to use the Hello Bar: the WordPress plugin and the configuration of the plugin at the Hello Bar homepage. Important to know: The plugin collaborates perfectly with all the big newsletter providers (MailChimp, Aweber, etc.).

Developer: dtelepathy, kynatro, dtrenkner, etc.
Regular updates: No
Latest version: 06.05.2011
WordPress 4.01 compatible: Yes, fully
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
Developer’s homepage: HelloBar.com
Download from WordPress.org

3. ManyContacts Bar

Start by registering for free at the ManyContacts Bar website, then adjust the bar. You will need the WordPress plugin only for adding the generated code to the WordPress theme. Advanced users can do this without plugin by implementing the code manually to functions.php. This solution also works with any popular newsletter provider.

Developer: woorank
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 03.04.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
Developer’s homepage: HelloBar.com
Download from WordPress.or

Plugins for Different Purposes

4. Digg Digg – Floating Share Bar

Digg Digg adds a nice floating bar with the important sharing buttons to your blog. Of course, you can choose which of the sharing buttons you want to display. All common social networks (Facebook, Google+, etc.) are supported. You can also adjust the position of the bar. Here are two screenshots:

As Floating Bar

Within the Article and/or Excerpt

As you can see, the Digg Digg plugin for WordPress offers many possibilities. I do recommend it.

Regular updates: not really
Latest version: 02.07.2013
WordPress 4.01 compatible: Yes, fully
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
Developer’s homepage: None
Download from WordPress.org

5. WordPress SEO by Yoast

SEO plugins are a dime a dozen. This one surely is one of the most frequently used and best plugins. Besides the “common” SEO functions like creating title tags for sites, articles and similar, this plugins offers another important feature. The on-page SEO function shown above helps you to optimize your article for an individual keyword. The screenshot shows that the article was optimized for the keyword “wordpress plugins”. You can find the keyword, for example, in the article title, the content, the URL, etc. With this function Google ranks your article higher because you can always check if you have forgotten something.

In addition, this plugin offers a sitemap.xml and many other things. What could have been made better are the functions that effect the title output. Other SEO plugins cope better with this; regards to wpSEO by Sergej Müller. wpSEO controls the title output via drag and drop instead of tags you have to get used to.

Developer: Yoast – Joost de Valk
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 26.11.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
Developer’s homepage: WordPress SEO Plugin
Download from WordPress.org

6. WooDojo by WooThemes

WooDojo is a free plugin developed by the well-known WordPress theme provider woothemes.com. WooDojo offers – just like Jetpack – a small plugin collection with valuable functions. There are several widgets like the WooTabs widget.

But it has also other useful functions. Here is an overview:

You can download the WooDojo plugin directly from the WooThemes website.

7. Disqus Comments

Disqus is the most famous and easily the best external comment system for WordPress (and other CMS). It doesn’t only look good, but also offers additional features like the Rich Media support – with easy integration of pictures and videos. It also works well on mobile devices. Disqus is not only supposed to be a simple comment system but a starting point for a community. So, you can follow comments and share them via Facebook and Twitter. The user interface allows for simple organization of all comments.

Developer: Yoast – Disqus and others
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 09.12.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
Developer’s homepage: Disqus Comments
Download from WordPress.org

8. Click to Tweet by CoSchedule

Click to Tweet is a new and interesting solution that makes it easy to share your content. It allows you to easily create tweetable content in little boxes. This is a completely new and interesting way of sharing content for your readers.

The Example Box Shown above Creates a Tweet by a Simple Click.

Developer: TodayMade
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 20.11.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: nicht bekannt
Developer’s homepage: Click to Tweet
Download from WordPress.org

9. Jetpack

Jetpack is an extensive collection of plugins developed by Automattic, the WordPress company. Thus, you can expect high quality. Don’t be intimidated by its functionality. You should configure it wisely with only the elements you really need. Everything else should be disabled. I took a closer look at the plugin in a previous article and suggested a reasonable configuration. By the way: One of the most popular features are the visitor analytics.

Developer: Automattic
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 15.12.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: not known
Developer’s homepage: Jetpack
Download from WordPress.org

10 VaultPress

This backup service can’t be mentioned often enough. VaultPress is probably the best backup protection available. It automatically syncs your content daily at a predefined time. You can restore these backups within a few minutes with only one click. VaultPress isn’t free, you will need a website account. The pricing for a website starts at $5 a month. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best $5 investments to be made.

For $15 monthly you can get a real-time backup. This means that when you change something on your website, like writing a new article, editing a site, or uploading a picture, a backup is performed. This so-called “Basic” plan is an excellent solution for websites with high frequencies like noupe.com. Other blogs and websites do well with the “Lite” plan. VaultPress supports Multisite, but you will need licenses for every site.

Developer: Automattic
Regular updates: Yes
Latest version: 15.12.2014
Price: Free on WordPress.org – needs license from 5 USD
License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Interactions with other plugins: Not known
VaultPress homepage – you will need a license
VaultPress plugin, free – shows the function with the license. From WordPress.org

Conclusion

Most of these plugins help you to get more readers (or email addresses for email marketing) or solve common problems bloggers face. It has always been my biggest problem to find a reliable and professional backup solution. Thanks to VaultPress this problem is finally solved. I swapped wpSeo for WordPress SEO by Yoast because of the on-page SEO which saves a lot of time when it comes to Google optimization, as I won’t forget important things anymore. I hope I could help you solving your problems with the plugins from this list. If you think I have forgotten one, feel free to leave a comment.

http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/recipe-for-success-ten-wordpress-plugins-to-rock-your-blog-87424.html

Best Way to Take a Break at Work? It's Not What You Think, Says New Study

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Photo: iStock

Learn how to take better breaks to increase your concentration and well-being.

There’s a vast amount of research dedicated to showing us exactly how to have the most productive workday. But when it comes to taking breaks, we pretty much figure that out on our own. After all, there’s no best way to take a break, right?

Wrong.

There is, indeed, a right way to take breaks at work to get optimal boosts in energy, concentration and motivation, as researchers from Baylor University recently found. For the study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, 97 employees were surveyed about their break times over a five-day workweek and asked to document what went on during each. Each person, on average, took two breaks per day, so researchers had a total of 959 break surveys to analyze. Breaks were considered any period of time during the workday in which work-relevant tasks were not required, and included lunch, coffee, personal email or socializing with colleagues.

From their analysis, they learned the following about how to take better breaks:

Mid-morning is the best time of day to take your break since it’ll replenish more resources like energy, concentration and motivation. “We found that when more hours had elapsed since the beginning of the work shift, fewer resources and more symptoms of poor health were reported after a break,” study authors wrote. “Therefore, breaks later in the day seem to be less effective.”
Spend your break doing activities you like, even if they’re work-related. Researchers found that when you like what you're doing, the break will feel more restful, you’ll feel better recovery, and you’ll be able to return to work stronger. And contrary to popular belief, doing non-work-related activities isn’t necessarily better. So, for instance, you might enjoy reading about something related to your job sector online more than having a coffee and looking out the window.
Frequent short breaks are better than longer ones because shorter breaks are associated with a better yield of mental and physical resources. Although the study didn’t find a magic number for the best break duration, it appears that more frequent breaks are ideal since they allow people to recharge more often. “Unlike your cellphone, which popular wisdom tells us should be depleted to zero percent before you charge it fully to 100 percent, people instead need to charge more frequently throughout the day,” explained study co-author Emily Hunter, PhD, associate professor of management in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business.

The benefits of taking these better breaks extends to health and even job satisfaction, say the researchers. Employees who take breaks earlier in the day, doing things they prefer, have better health in the form of less somatic symptoms—including headaches, eyestrain and lower back pain—after their breaks. Moreover, they are happier with their jobs, experience decreased burnout and have increased organizational citizenship behavior.

How do you spend your breaks?

http://www.workingmother.com/best-ways-to-take-workday-break

Law Of Attraction - If You Learn This, Your Life Will Never Be The Same

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:55:00 +0000

How To Create An Interactive Quiz For Your Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Quizzes are a great way to boost user engagement on your website. Sites like Buzzfeed are already cashing by making fun and interactive quizzes that get tons of social media shares. If you’re wondering how to make your own quizzes, today’s post is all about it. This is a guest post by JP Misenas and he will walk you through the various steps required to design interactive quizzes that will drive traffic and boost sales on your blog.

As marketers, we employ various types of content with an aim to improve customer relationships/loyalties, boost engagement and raise brand awareness. These became some of the top content marketing goals for the year, and 32.3% of marketers already have a content marketing strategy in place.

It’s hard differentiating the effectiveness of one piece of content from another, and with our busy schedules, we don’t have the time to implement each and everyone type of content into our marketing strategy. So for time’s sake, what you want to know is what kind of content has been known to perform consistently well that you can implement into your marketing?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be relatively familiar with what circulates on social media networks. The kind of content we’re looking to utilize in our marketing strategy is something you may have come across at least once in your lifetime. You’ve probably even interacted with this piece of content but never considered using it from a marketing perspective, I mean, it is one of the most underrated types of content out there after all.

We’re talking about online quizzes.

Social media quizzes in general, have the innate ability to attract audiences and engage them in an entertaining level, and that’s just scratching the surface. Underneath, these quizzes, when applied to a marketing strategy, can increase brand awareness, generate leads and drive revenue. I am sure you’ve seen how your facebook feed is loaded with random quiz results shared by people. BuzzFeed leads the pack by creating super shareable quizzes. By the numbers, Buzzfeed’s viral quizzes have helped it to drive a massive traffic over the years. I’m sure that was enough to pique your interest, but why take my word for it?

Here at Interact, we’ve helped over 10,000 brands create over 25,000 quizzes, so saying we have a pretty good understanding of quizzes is an understatement. Today, we’ll be showing you how to create your own quiz for your marketing strategy, along with some of the best practices to make the most out of it.After this step-by-step guide, even you might consider implementing quizzes as an interactive piece of content in your marketing.

Let’s jump right to it.

Step 1: Pick The Appropriate Title And Quiz Type

They say that 80% of readers gauge the worth of something by its title, and that’s quite a bit of pressure on you. So we’re here to give you several templates to choose from that have performed consistently with readers.

Choosing Your Title Template

The “Actually” Title – Did you know that including the word “actually” in your title can change an average question into a challenge? At that point, you’re trying to see how much someone actually knows about something in contrast to what they know in general. It really tests the boundaries of your audiences, and many are willing to rise up to the challenge.
For example, the quiz titled “What career should you actually have” has over 5m shares is is one of the top viewed quizzes on BuzzFeed.
The “Which (Blank) Are You?” Title – Have you ever wondered which Disney villain you most likely resemble? This one’s a classic. Because of human curiosity, sometimes we’re just dying to know what kind of ice cream flavor we are. They say curiosity killed the cat, but I say curiosity brings in the leads.
For example, the quiz titled “What kind of dog are you” went viral in no time with over 3.7m shares.
The “Celebrity Personality” Title – Take the “Which (Blank) Are You?” Title template and put a spin on it by replacing the (Blank) with a celebrity instead and you get this title template. This particular title resonates with more people because of the use of larger names, so if you’re trying to attract a broader audience, this one works just fine.
For example, almost 77% of quizzes of Playbuzz quizzes that are shared 1m times or more are personality quizzes. It was a never a better time to bank on personality quizzes.

Once you have the title of your quiz all figured out, it’s time to think of the kind of quiz that you want to make. Quizzes generally fall under two types, which we’ll go over now.

Choosing Your Type Of Quiz

The Personality Quiz – Because of something called the“self-serving bias,” people generally like to hear good things about themselves. That’s what makes this type of quiz so effective. The personality quiz categorizes people into personality types that tend to compliment who they are based on the answers they gave during the quiz.
From a marketing perspective, if you were a brand that places an emphasis on product sales, you could place individuals into categories that offers personalized product recommendations based on their answers. It personalizes the shopping experience and develops a closer connection with your customer base through the help of a quiz.For example, the color quiz is shared over 5m times.
The Knowledge Test – This is your basic right or wrong kind of quiz. You’ll come across the knowledge test frequently on social media, testing audiences on how much they know about a certain subject, then giving results based on accuracy. The knowledge test is a fun way to assess different audiences.
As a marketer, you could use the knowledge test to assess employees in the workplace, or you could challenge the knowledge of your audience on how much they know about your brand, its products, or any other trending topic.

Recommended reading: 39 tips to market your business on Facebook (For FREE)

Step 2: Craft Questions That Drive Engagement

After you’re settled on a title and the type of quiz you want to make, it’s time to get into the meat of the quiz. The questions are an important part of the quiz because it’s where you as a brand can establish a one-on-one connection with your audience. In a HuffPo post about what makes BuzzFeed quizzes viral, questions played a major role.Here are a couple of guidelines to follow when coming up with your questions:

Become A Part Of Your Quiz – Literally, be a part of you quiz. Your quiz represents your brand, and you can’t let it do all of the work for you. Treat your questions as if you were talking to someone in person. This creates a more relaxed tone, and it helps the quiz-taker get comfortable with what your brand stands for. This really helps when it comes to encouraging your audience to join your mailing list later on.
Add Visual Elements To Your Quiz – When creating your questions, consider using images. Text-only quizzes are fine, but including pictures really adds a little something to the quiz. It gives your audience a higher entertainment value, and it also makes the quiz itself feel more like a trivia game.
Simplify The Quiz-Taking Process – People don’t have a lot of time on their hands like they used to, and their attention spans are pretty much on the same wavelength. Try to aim between having 6 to 8 questions on your quiz. This will usually take most people about 2-3 minutes to finish, which is just the right amount of time.

Step 3: Create An Effective Lead Capture Funnel:

Once all of your questions are set up, it’s time to proceed to the lead capture. This is where we’ll create a form that asks your audience for their contact information in exchange for their results. The purpose of the lead capture form is to collect contact information so that you can grow an email list. Collecting these leads will allow you to reach out to them later via marketing automation.Here are a few ways to increase the opt-in rate of your lead capture via Quizzes:

Promise Value To Your Audience – Although we’re already trading someone’s results for their contact information, it doesn’t hurt to give them an incentive to encourage them even further to make the trade. Incentivize your lead capture by throwing in offers like a weekly newsletter, an entry to a free giveaway, or maybe even an ebook.
Only Request The Information You Need – Sometimes it is possible to ask for more than what’s necessary, and that’s not something you want to do. Only ask your audience for the necessary contact information. Anything else that your brand won’t be using shouldn’t be asked for in the first place.
Be Honest About Your Marketing Strategy – Not everyone will catch onto the idea that you’ll be getting in touch with them after they opt-in, so it’s a good idea to give them a friendly reminder. This not only lets your audience know that you’ll be contacting them soon, but it also prevents them from mistaking your email as spam.

Step 4: Creating Shareable Results

After you’ve gotten your lead capture all set up, it’s time to move onto the results. Since the results are what’s often shared on social media, you’re going to want to make sure that they’re worth sharing.Here are some ways to optimize your results for sharing:

Compliment Your Audience – People are more likely to share good things about themselves, so it’s safe to say that positive emotions promote sharing. Compliment your audience with your results, but be truthful about it as well. Giving your quiz takes a chance to believe that they share a part of someone or some place they admire makes them feel good about it and they instantly want to share the results with their friends and teammates. This is the reason why quizzes get shared. This is what BuzzFeed has actually done over the years. It’s quiz “which city should you actually live in?” has been viewed more than 18 million times and gotten nearly 2.5 million likes on Facebook.
Use Enthralling Images – Remember how we suggested the use of images in your questions? Well now, the image you choose in your results will play an even larger role since it’ll be what appears on social media when shared. Be sure to pick out images that will grab people’s attention.
Include A Call-To-Action – You want to assert your brand as much as possible, so don’t be afraid to include a call-to-action in your results. Lead your audience back to your website, or offer personalized product recommendations to keep them interested.

Let’s Wrap Things Up:

Needless to say, quizzes have worked for authority sites like New York Times, BuzzFeed, PlayBuzz etc and they can help you succeed too.And that’s it. With a push to produce content that can perform well in your marketing strategy, social media quizzes are the way to go. We gave you several title templates to work with today, along with the types of quizzes you can choose to create on social media.

From there, we showed you how to create entertaining questions to drive audience engagement, followed by a few quick pointers on how to create an effective lead capture. Lastly, we included some of the best practices to get the most out of your social media quiz results.

If you’re looking for a fun and innovative way to boost your marketing, consider creating your own social media quizzes. You’re bound to find some solace in the comfort of using quizzes as an interactive piece of content for your marketing.

http://www.digitalgyd.com/make-buzzfeed-like-online-quiz-for-website-marketing/

Four Ways To Grow Your Blog The Right Way

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

How to Grow Your Blog (the Right Way)

Ever wonder what makes one blog popular and another flop?

Or why one blog builds a solid readership, while another struggles to find an audience?

There’s no doubt about it. Starting a business blog isn’t easy. But growing one? That is even harder.

From content to promotion, creating a blog that gets noticed takes time.

But here’s the good news. There are ways to grow a blog without scouring the web. Or spending long nights agonizing about whether your decisions are the right ones.

This last week, I was fortunate to receive a nomination for Social Media Examiner’s “Top 10 Social Media Blogs.” This isn’t an award I take lightly. Not with the amount of blood sweat and tears behind the success of my blog and the business behind it.

As I reflected on my 12 year blogging journey, a foundational piece within my career, it got me to thinking.

What do I wish I’d known when I first started out? And more than that, what blog success strategies did I need to know to keep me from making critical mistakes? (many I made along the way)

In today’s post, I’m sharing four steps to help you grow a profitable (and successful) business blog…the right way.

How to Grow Your Blog (the Right Way)

1. Create Strategic (and well-defined) Blog Goals

If I asked you why you want to start a blog, would you know the answer? Can you articulate what your blog will do to support business goals?

If not, don’t start a blog. If you already have a blog, stop writing immediately. Sound harsh? Consider this.

Blogging without a plan is as useful as cleaning the house with a party going on. Oh sure, you might gain a little traction, but you’ll end up backtracking, and eventually starting all over.

If you started your blog with a loosely defined plan, then what you have is an erratic content strategy at best.

Without clarity in direction, mission and strategic goals, you’ll limp along.

Want to create your blogging goals? Start with this goal setting worksheet.

Map Your Social Media Success! Grab this 10 step worksheet to Make Your Social Media Goals Stick.CLICK TO TWEET

Important Blog Questions to Answer

What is the number one reason you want to blog?
What will a blog do for your business or what has it done so far? Look down the road – 3, 6, 9 months.
Who will read your blog? Be specific about your reader and potential customer. (we’ll tackle this in depth below)
How will you stay consistent? Who will help you achieve your blogging goals?
How does a blog support your current marketing efforts? (this is a biggie – don’t overlook what role it plays in your overall marketing plan)
What’s your writing style? Are you serious, straightforward, funny, data driven, silly, witty?
What will your marketing funnel look like? e.g. How will your blog create business opportunities and drive sales?

It’s a noisy online world with millions of blogs authored every day. If you want to stand out, you need to get strategic.

Commit to SMART goals. Goals that push you towards something tangible, concrete and trackable.

Specific Have you been specific in what you want to achieve?
Measurable How will you know if you’ve achieved your goal?
Achievable Is this a goal that you can achieve?
Relevant Is this goal aligned with your mission, vision and values?
Time Specific When do you want to achieve this goal by?

No matter what industry you’re in, one thing is certain. Content is a constant and gaining customer attention is at a premium.

Make yours stand out through defined blog goals backed by an actionable plan.

Your blog content can stand out through defined goals and an actionable plan. Set yours today!CLICK TO TWEET

2. Write Audience Specific Content

There’s a whole lot more to blogging than writing. Don’t believe me? Just ask any successful blogger what the key to their success is.

What drives blog traffic, leads and conversions?

The answer is simple. They know who their market is, what they need and how to solve their problem(s). Then they produce content with that audience in mind.

Just like those bloggers, you have an ideal blog audience. They’re уоur customers, prospective buyers or users. Do you know them inside out?

If you want to run a successful blog, you must create content for your ideal reader. That makes research a must.

So, where do you begin?

First, get crystal clear on your specific market. List their qualities, demographics, skills and any other important information.

Here’s what that might look like:

Persona Description (example)

Female
Average age: 44
3 people in the household – have to assume older child (no small children running around)
Self-employed, small business, or entrepreneur
Income – $75k

Persona Resources

These details can come from many sources:

Google Analytics
Customer Surveys
Customer Interviews

Creating a persona can help you better focus on your core reader and customer. Not sure how to get started? Use this Persona Template from HubSpot.

Solve The Problem

Your next step is to write down the top 5-10 problems you solve for your reader/customer.

For example, if you’re a productivity coach, you might help business owners:

Work smarter
Overcome procrastination
Put systems in place to combat overwhelm
Identify counter-productive habits
Balance life and business daily tasks to get more done

Or you might be a local daycare provider. Your blog addresses the challenges all parents of small children face. You talk about teething, potty training, sleeping through the night, and how to get them to eat their peas and carrots. Or at least that’s what I remember from those days many years ago.

Now think about it. Those issues are very different from ones faced by parents of teenagers. What you write about, the topics you tackle and how you position your content – should all have this audience in mind.

Your blog topics and the content you write must have a specific audience in mind. Here's how!CLICK TO TWEET

Not 100% sure who your market is? Start here.

How to Define Your Target Market (answer these questions)

Who are you passionate about serving?
What differentiates you from the competition?
Who is your specific target market?
What qualities or characteristics define them?
What’s important to them?
What problems can you solve?

Being clear about your exact market will allow you to tailor your content and your message in a specific way.

Do Your Due Diligence

Your next step is research. You’re going to research the topics you listed above. Each one will become topics within your blog, allowing you speak to that challenge.

Now this is where it gets really fun. You’re going to turn to Google to search for terms around the problems you solve.

You’ll search based on the words/phrases your potential readers, users and buyers would actually type or say. What are they asking Google, Siri or any other search engine when looking for your product or service? In other words, what is the intention behind their need?

Probably not going to be “work smarter.” Instead they might ask, “what are the top productivity tips for business professionals?

See how conversational that is? Not the traditional SEO tactics we once knew. Those tactics have made a radical shift. The days of “tricking” search engines with keyword placement and stuffing are long gone.

Today, it’s all about user intent, the value of your content and writing for the reader. And not just any reader. Writing for the reader you want, the one you’ve outlined in detail.

As Marc Ensign puts it,

“You must do extensive “people” research. Instead of looking for the “right” keywords, we are looking for the “right” visitors. Our ideal clients. The ones that can move the needle for us. And once we know who they are, we can better understand what they need, how they search and what they expect when they land on our website. We don’t care about traffic. We care about the right traffic.”

This is something we work on daily at Post Planner. Here’s how our Editor in Chief, Diana Adams explains it:

For the best results, think about what kind of content would be most valuable to your audience. In other words, what is their intent? Why did they come to your blog? What kind of info are they hoping to see from you?

The best way to answer these questions is to really know your audience (your customers and potential customers). What are the struggles they face? What problems do they need solved?

Once you can figure out how to answer these questions better than anyone else in your niche, your traffic and subscribers will go up up up (and fast)!!

Now it’s time to get writing. Create a spreadsheet like the one we use above to define the exact struggle and intent of your reader. Get into the details first and the writing will be a breeze!

Writing today is about user intent, the value of your content and writing for the right reader. CLICK TO TWEET

3. Make a Consistent Blog Schedule (and management system)

When was the last time you went back to a blog that hadn’t been updated in months? Probably never.

Staying consistent with your blogging efforts is the only way to establish your reputation and build blog credibility. After all, how can anyone take you seriously if you don’t take your blog seriously?

Whether you use Google Calendar, Handle (my personal fave), or another reminder system – pick yours and stick with it.

And don’t get caught up in creating an elaborate content calendar. It’s as easy as picking the days you’ll write, identifying your topics and then sticking with a plan.

As CoSchedule says,

The more time you spend strategizing, the less time you spend creating real content that will influence sales (which, let’s face it, is the entire reason to plan your marketing calendar).

Amen to that. Stop agonizing over the details and instead focus on what you can commit to.

Can you blog once a week, twice or even three times? Think seriously about how often you can create and publish new content.

Begin with at last one post per week and keep the day you publish consistent. You want to train your readers when to look for your content. Certainly this can and will change as your blogging continues, but for now, just focus on one consistent day.

Peg Fitzpatrick offers this advice,

“Once you have your editorial calendar created, you’ll find that creating more content is easier because you know just what’s coming up next. This takes some of the pressure off of creating blog content and still allows you the freedom to move articles around in the schedule or work ahead in any order that you see fit.”

Remember: always put the quality of your work ahead of the quantity you produce. Only posting one quality post per week is far better than alienating your blog audience.

And poorly written articles that are thrown up on your blog hastily will hurt you in more ways than one.

Not sure what to add to your blog calendar? Answer these questions to add content (along with the intent above) to your schedule.

What makes your business unique? What do you love about it that your blog audience will appreciate and respond to in kind?
What questions do current clients and customers ask over and over? If one person asks, more will want the answer. Create a running list of top questions you can answer.
What do past customers have to say about your business? Use testimonials to add to your blog to help others understand how you help.
What makes you passionate about your business? Write down why you love to help your community and then share that within your blog.

4. Put Together a Blog Promotional Strategy

Hitting publish on your latest blog post is not your final step. In fact, it’s only the beginning.

If you want to get the word out and encourage blog growth, you must promote, promote, promote.

That means getting your content in front of the right people. People who will take action on the content you share.

That’s where an email list, traditional marketing and a social media promotional strategy come in.

A blog audience isn’t going to miraculously show up at your doorstep. To get your blog noticed (and build a popular blog that keeps people coming back), you need to tell people where to find you.

Start with traditional marketing. Add a link to your email signature, newsletter and other promotional items. If you’re a Gmail user, a great option is Wisestamp.

Now build an email list. One of the biggest mistakes many bloggers make is creating a healthy list. Get Response offers these tips to build an email list…fast.

Don’t buy email lists. Unless the vendor is highly reputable, purchasing an email list is worse than a waste of time. You could end up having your company listed as a spammer.
Start with current clients, business partners and followers. You already have them in your contact directory. Many email management services have tools to let you easily move them from your contact book and email history to your email-marketing list.
Leverage membership lists. Many chambers of commerce and professional organizations provide contact lists as a membership benefit. This is great for B2B market, but only when used intelligently.
Ask online. Use multiple online locations to host your sign-up form: website, social media profiles, blog, online ad, infographic, whitepaper download, squeeze page, ecommerce checkout, and more.
Ask offline. Use sign-in sheets at stores, events and shows; collect business cards; use QR codes or an SMS signup service.
Use incentives to encourage sign-ups. Offer free stuff that is relevant and matches your brand and industry: exclusive webinars, industry reports, eBooks, how-to videos, and special offers.

If you want to get the word out and grow your blog, building a list is a great way to do it. Write amazing content that goes out to just your email subscribers. Get them excited and involved in your marketing efforts.

Next, leverage social media. Share your post across all of your social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and even visual networks like Pinterest and Instagram.

There’s a whole new audience waiting to find you, so let them!

Final Thoughts

No matter if you’re looking to gain new leads or improve online awareness, the benefits of growing a thriving business blog can be far-reaching.

If you want to succeed, make the commitment today to stay consistent with your blogging efforts.

No blog succeeds overnight. It will take time and perseverance.

But in the end, the results are what make the difference. Take the plunge, enjoy the ride and have fun growing your blog!

http://rebekahradice.com/how-to-grow-a-blog/

How To Increase The Power Of Your Mind To Manifest What You’re Asking For, “By Accident”!

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Everyone on the path to “success”, who self-educate and study principles that govern success in any area of life, know that our lives are determined by the subconscious script that continues to play inside our minds, that tells us what we’re worth, what we’re capable of, and ultimately, determines what we attract.

We also know that the most powerful way to re-write these scripts so that our internal conversation is one that serves us better, is through the use of affirmations and incantations.

Many of us write pages of affirmations, put them on cards, say them repeatedly, but often not consistently. It’s easy to “forget” to say them, or not be in the mood to say them, or even worse, to say them out of discipline, but to not FEEL what we are saying, and therefore, in effect, we are speaking incongruently, which does NOT help to change the belief system at all.

In order for affirmations to be EFFECTIVE, our vibration, our energy, must match that which we are speaking, as though it has ALREADY happened.

There must be a change in our physiology, a “state” that we put ourselves in when we speak these affirmations, in order to convince the subconscious mind that it has already taken place. But often this is not the case, and therefore, the affirmations are ineffective.

So an easy way to become more consistent and congruent with our affirmations, to involve our bodies (physiology), as well as our minds (thought), is to create an environment or a situation where you barely even know you are doing them… or at least, these affirmations are ‘switched on’ by default, and don’t have to be something you are completely conscious of, therefore, they become less effort on your part, and more effective at the same time!

The biggest secret to your success, therefore, is to exercise! Through exercise, you can fast-track your progress “by accident”.

This video only goes for 1:45, and will convey my point more effectively than I can with text!

So now that we understand that exercise can be used as a MIND technique, even moreso than any physical purpose it serves, the question may now be, “so how do I find the time to exercise”. On that note, here is an article that will help you balance your life so that you can include exercise as part of it.

You see, when we exercise, we are not just saying the words of the affirmation to ourselves… our physiology is congruent with these words, we BELIEVE what we are saying, and our bodies respond. In this way, they become incantations, not just affirmations.

When you are running on a treadmill, or walking up a hill, or lifting weights, or whatever you decide to do in the way of exercise that causes discomfort or pain, inside your mind you are telling yourself “I can do it”, “don’t stop”, “get to the top” etc. You are intentional with these sentences… you’re not saying them just because some book on success said you should… you’re saying it because you MEAN it, and you actually achieve what you said you would… you DO make it to the top, or you DO finish the time you set, or whatever it may be.

In this way, the subconscious mind learns to understand that your affirmations are directly connected to your achievements, and it becomes more effective in re-writing the internal scripts you have, and instructing the conscious mind on it’s action plan, not only in exercise, but in EVERY area of your life.

It’s like the subconscious says to itself “whatever you tell me happens… and you’ve just told me you’ll get the job/earn the money/grow the business etc, so let’s go ahead and create the sequence of events that will cause that to happen… conscious mind, here’s what you need to do…”. Immediately, it sets the plan into motion through instructing the conscious mind, and what you want begins to manifest, and all because you didn’t just “say” affirmations, you MEANT them. You felt them. The subconscious works with your vibrations, not your “words”.

Sometimes it’s hard to actually believe in the success we are asking for. We want it, and we want to believe we’ll get there, but it’s hard to SEE ourselves with it. In these cases, affirmations on their own will be less effective, if at all.

So if this is what’s going on with you, use EXERCISE, and watch things change!! The sentences you use while exercising will be attached to the emotions you felt when you said it. From that point on, the subconscious will use the same emotion every time you repeat that sentence, even when you say it about something different. That emotion and that sentence have already been wired together through ‘exercise’, which now makes it more effective when you’re talking about your finances, or other goals and dreams, using the same words, saying “I can do it”!

Get out and exercise. Don’t try to “find the time”, MAKE the time. If you now understand its value, you will make it a priority. Remember, none of us have a “time” problem, we only have a “priority” problem! To understand 4 simple steps to balancing your life right NOW, read this article!

http://www.hollynunan.com/the-biggest-well-kept-secret-to-your-success-exposed/

How To Organize A Small Home Office

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 00:55:00 +0000

How To Manifest Money

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Playfulness

The most important aspect of manifesting money is to approach it from the right heartset. Think of your heartset as the overall vibe of your relationship to the activity of attracting money. How would you describe that relationship? Is it greedy, needy, excited, hopeful, etc?

If you approach this process from a place of neediness, clinginess, scarcity, or too much seriousness, you’ll most likely fail. That’s the right vibe for attracting nothing — or for making things worse by attracting unwanted expenses — but it’s not the right vibe for attracting money.

So if you come at this from a place of saying, “I really need $1000 to pay my rent next month, so I’m going to focus hard on manifesting it via the Law of Attraction,” well… good luck with that. But I’d bet against you.

A slightly better vibe is that of hope, but this is still a pretty weak vibe. Hope won’t get you very far.

A much better vibe is to come from a place of curiosity and experimentation. Go into a state of childlike wonder. With this vibe you may begin to generate some interesting results.

An even stronger vibe is to generate feelings of playfulness and excitement. This is a great vibe for manifesting money. In the next section, I’ll share a story to illustrate how I do this with my daughter.

Knowing

When you want to manifest money, it’s important to know that it’s already there. If it’s hidden at all, it’s hiding in plain sight, waiting for you to notice it and pick it up. This applies whether we’re talking about cash found on the ground or opportunities that will generate cash.

Know that the cash and the opportunities are right in front of your face. You just have to adjust your “eyes” to see them. You do this by shifting your vibe — your frequencies of thought and emotion — to one that’s capable of detecting the money.

It’s fun to think of this vibe-shifting process as shifting dimensions, as if you’re tuning in to a different perceptual frequency spectrum. That other reality was there all along. You just couldn’t see it before because you were tuned in to incompatible perceptual frequencies, frequencies that made the money invisible and undetectable by your senses. Maybe you were stuck on the red part of the spectrum, while the money was hanging out in the blue part.

Obviously your senses pick up a lot as you go about your day, but you only notice a puny fraction of all that input. In order to manifest money, you need to tune your senses to bring to your attention useful input that you’ve been subconsciously dismissing as irrelevant background noise. This tuning process takes some time, but you can definitely do it.

Lately I’ve been teaching my daughter Emily (age 10) how to manifest coins. I do this by turning it into a game. When we’re out walking together, I challenge her to see if she can find more coins than I can.

The first time I did this, she was really bad at it. I found several coins during our walk together, often coins that she walked right past without even noticing. Instead of finding coins, she didn’t notice anything. The coins didn’t register within her perceptual reality.

Later on she began noticing things that were close to coins, but not coins. She found bottle caps, paper clips, scraps of paper, and coin-like smudges on the floor — everything but coins. I kept pointing out to her that there are coins everywhere, but you have to tune in to the “coin abundance frequency” to see them. Each time I found a coin and showed it to her, I could tell it was gradually helping her tune in to the right perceptual frequency.

One reason she was bad at this game was that she was tuning out the possible existence of coins everywhere she walked. She just didn’t think there could be that many coins hiding in plain sight. By demonstrating to her that the coins were indeed there and that she was simply failing to notice them, I helped shift her beliefs. She stopped thinking of the game as something outside her control (relying on luck or chance), and she began thinking of what she could control (her open-mindedness and attentiveness).

At first when she would walk past a coin, and I’d pick it up and say, “Look at this, Emily. There was a nickel there, and you walked right past it! Your eyes definitely saw it because you were looking in that direction, but the coin didn’t register in your mind. You still need to adjust yourself to the right vibe. Remember — the coins are everywhere! You just have to command your eyes to notice them.”

Initially this surprised her. She could dismiss it as luck… or as some kind of trick… or as a momentary lapse of her part. Then when it kept happening, it began to frustrate her. I helped her shift that frustration to amusement by pointing out that she was really good at finding bottle caps and smudges, and we had some laughs about that. She just needed to adjust her mind a little bit more to notice the coins.

Finally she began to accept that yes, there really are coins everywhere, and she only has to notice them. It seemed like she was beginning to tell her eyes and her mind to get with the program and start noticing the coins.

Emily has a competitive side, so I played to that by challenging her to find more coins than me, which boosted her motivation and desire to get good at it. She knows that technically it’s a fair game, and she even gave herself an advantage by walking in front of me, so she could be the first to spot new coins. And since she’s only 4’9″ inches tall, she’s a lot closer to the ground than I am.

Gradually she got better at the game. We went out yesterday and played again. In an hour of walking around some hotels on the Vegas Strip, she found 46 cents: 1 quarter, 3 nickels, and 6 pennies. In that same time, I found only 6 cents. She won the game for the first time and was pretty excited about it. And of course I gave her lots of accolades for it, so as to encourage her to keep improving.

I dare say she’s probably better at finding coins than I am now. She now knows there are coins everywhere, but she also really gets into the playful and competitive spirit of the game, which is much more exciting for her than it is for me. I think partly she likes knowing that it’s a fair game that either of us can win, and there’s no reason she can’t be at least as skillful as I am.

When it comes to creating a vibe of playfulness and excitement, children can easily be more masterful than adults. This is the same vibe we need to recreate as adults in order to manifest whatever we desire.

It may sound silly to do this as an adult, but it’s a game worth playing. When you’re out with friends sometime, have a contest to see who can manifest the most money. You may not get too excited about finding coins, but you may generate some excitement about trying to best your friends in a silly contest. That silliness will actually help you get the right vibe, thereby improving your ability to manifest money.

Detachment

People often get confused about the relationship between desire and detachment. Aren’t they diametrically opposed? How can you have both at the same time? Isn’t desire a form of attachment?

No, these aren’t in conflict. They coexist perfectly.

Let me ‘splain.

Desire is about what you wish to create. You could describe this vibe as passion, excitement, or even lust. It’s a delicious pool of emotions you summon by focusing on a new target. The stronger your desire, the better, so amp it up!

Detachment, on the other hand, is about how those desires ultimately manifest for you. When you become too attached to when and how your desires show up, you screw up the manifesting process. Instead of holding the vibe of playfulness and abundance, you start sending out signals like concern, worry, and stress. Don’t do that!

Would you become stressed and worried if you couldn’t find enough coins on the ground? Would that vibe improve your performance? No, that would only lower your performance.

When you notice that you’re getting frustrated, pause, breathe, and go back to the desire side. Hold that vision of the creation you wish to experience, and wallow in the positive sensations of being there in your heart, mind, and spirit. Know that physical reality will soon catch up, as long as you keep holding the right vibe.

When you feel moved to take action from a place of passion and excitement, not stress, then go ahead and let those actions flow through you. It will seem to be more work to stop yourself — you’ll feel like you’re chickening out and holding back if you stay still. Follow your impulses. But don’t worry about the immediate results of those actions. There may be some twists and turns along the way.

Power

When manifesting money, it’s especially important that you don’t give your power away to money. This negates your creative ability, and the money probably won’t arrive if you do that. This is a VERY common mistake.

You can’t effectively wield the power of manifestation by believing that you can manifest something you desire (i.e. money) while simultaneously believing that something you desire has power over you (i.e. money).

If you want to manifest money, you CANNOT believe that money is a power source. Money cannot give you wealth or abundance or happiness. It really can’t give you anything. Money just sits there — all the power comes from you. If you believe that having more money will give you any additional power at all, then you’re actually holding the vibe that says, “I’m too weak to attract money.” You’ll have to get a jobinstead. 😉

Think of it like this. If you want to manifest money, but you believe that money is its own power source, then deep down you’re giving money the power to say no to you. If money has power, then it can refuse to show up.

Instead of this crazy wrong approach, in your mindset and heartset, you must KNOW that you’re completely 100% dominant over money and that money is completely 100% submissive to you. You’re in total command of it. If you order it to show up, it must obey you. It has no power of its own. It cannot refuse you.

When you manifest money, you are COMMANDING it to come into your reality. You’re the CREATOR. Money has no choice but to obey you, but only if you wield your true power. If you give your power away to money, then you empower money to deny your requests. Money will say, “Well, if you’re letting me decide, then no, I’m staying over here.”

If you approach money like a power source of its own, then by trying to manifest it, you’re really trying to overpower it, and in such a contest you’ll usually lose. That contest, however, is completely internal — and pretty much insane. It’s like trying to arm wrestle yourself. How can you win? It’s a false reality you’re projecting because you aren’t ready to fully wield your own power yet.

Remember that money is nothing but a number. Or it’s pieces of metal and paper. How could it possibly be more powerful than a conscious human being such as yourself?

If you think that once you have money, you will become stronger, you’re crazy. Absolutely deluded! More likely — if you actually did manifest money from that kind of vibe — you’d grow even weaker. This would be a bad outcome for you, even though it seems like what you want. You’d be a weak-minded, weak-hearted person with more money, and you’d still see the money as more powerful than you, even while it’s in your possession. You’d then become attached to it and afraid of losing it because you’d still mistakenly see it as a power source. It would become a source of security for you, a constantly vulnerable one. The more money you had, the more paranoid you’d become about losing it. This would really mess you up big time. So be very, very glad that you naturally attract less money when you think of money as a power source. If you invite money into your life from that crazy frame of giving away your power, then money will become your Master, and you will be forever its slave. Don’t even go there!

If money has no power, then why manifest it at all? In truth, you don’t need to. But if you wish to manifest money, then do it as a game. Money is a toy you can play with. Get excited about the experience of manifesting money, but don’t put any attention into what you’d do with the money once you have it. It’s merely a number.

If you desire something you think money will give you, then focus on that desire directly, not on the money you think you need to get it. Money may or may not be part of the manifestation process.

Only focus on manifesting money directly if you’re capable of seeing the money as a plaything, like a video game score. It’s only something to manifest for fun, not something to get all worked up and stressed about.

Once again, do NOT give your power away to money. You must know that money is completely powerless. All the power is within you, never out there.

Upgrading

When manifesting money, start small and work up to larger amounts. See it as a score you’re aiming to increase, but don’t put larger amounts on a pedestal by assuming they’re more difficult to manifest.

I started with manifesting pennies in the Summer of 2006. Then I graduated to nickels, dimes, and quarters. I focused on quarters for several weeks. Then I progressed to dollars to $100 to $1000 to $10K to $50K. Overall it took less than a year to go from manifesting pennies to manifesting $50K. After that point I become more interested in non-monetary manifesting and had some especially fun times with manifesting in my social life — friends, mentors, and other yumminess. In fact, I honestly feel that manifesting money is a bit boring compared to all the other cool stuff you can manifest. It’s like playing a video game and obsessing over the score. That can be fun for a while, but eventually you want to focus on more interesting aspects of the game world.

If you can get good at manifesting coins, you can manifest larger sums too. The process is the same. Only some limiting beliefs of yours may stand in the way. But as you gradually upgrade to larger sums, you can collapse those false beliefs.

Once Emily gets good at manifesting coins and feels comfortable and confident with it, I’ll start challenging her to manifest larger sums. She may not find money on the ground as often, but it will show up in other ways.

Money comes to you through the filters of your beliefs, but you don’t have to change your beliefs radically. You just have to open enough of a portal in your beliefs to allow different sums to come to you.

Coins may be found on the ground while you’re walking around. Bills will sometimes be found on the ground too. Larger sums may manifest in the form of exchanges, business deals, inheritances, inspired action, and other ways. Assume that those larger sums are right in front of your face, staring at you and screaming at you to notice them. You just have to tune your vibe to the right frequency to pick them up.

I’ve noticed that as I’ve shifted my vibe to manifest larger sums of money and to manifest new experiences in other parts of my life, I seem to fall out of resonance with manifesting smaller sums. I’m not as good at manifesting coins as I was in 2006. That’s because my vibe isn’t tuned in to the coin manifesting frequency as much. These days I’m spending more time using the LoA to manifest cool social connections and travel experiences. I’ve tuned my vibe to focus on that part of the perceptual frequency. I also feel more excited and playful about manifesting in these other areas as opposed to adding to my financial score.

Congruency

Every relationship in your life contributes to the overall vibe you’re putting out. This includes all the different ways you relate to money.

For example, if your job sucks and doesn’t pay you very well, and you try to manifest money on the side, that probably won’t work so well because each time you go to work at your job, you risk re-triggering the vibe of feeling financially under-appreciated.

This is where lots of people get stuck with the LoA. They put out conflicting vibes every day. They may visualize having more money and feeling abundant and grateful, but then they go to the grocery store, and they buy cheap, low quality food because in the back of their mind, they’re saying to themselves that they can’t afford the good stuff. And that naturally cancels out the vibe of abundance, so the result is no change.

If your current circumstances cause you to emit conflicting vibes, then even as you go through the motions of acting in accordance with a scarcer financial situation than you’d like, keep your vibe focused on that of abundance. The best way to do that is by holding the heartset of gratitude. So even if you buy cheap, low-quality food, hold the vibe that you’re grateful for it and that you appreciate it. Feel appreciative that such food exists and that it’s within your budget. And then look at the high quality stuff, and emotionally invite it into your life. If possible, find one way in which you can splurge for higher quality items, like buying a few organic apples, and feel grateful that you can do that. And when you eat those apples, really enjoy them, and intend to receive more of the same.

But do NOT beat yourself up for not being able to afford what you desire. That will only lower your vibe.

Do like I did with Emily when she kept finding bottle caps and smudges. Praise yourself for succeeding at what you’re already manifesting, and then command your senses to adjust to a more abundant part of the spectrum of reality. Be patient with yourself — you’ll get it.

Whenever you start feeling bad about your financial situation, see that as a form of feedback. Let it become an immediate trigger to refocus on your desires. Say to yourself, “Okay, obviously I don’t want this. So what do I want instead?” Then think about happier alternatives; allow your mind to go there, and let the resulting new vibe flow through you.

Manifesting money is a fun challenge. It’s definitely doable if you approach it from a place of playfulness, knowing, and power. It does involve some discipline, but the discipline is mental and emotional, not physical.

You aren’t going to let a 10-year old girl kick your ass at this game, are you? 😉

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-manifest-money/

Bigger, Braver, Bolder Content Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

This week I debuted a new presentation at Content Marketing World about creating bigger stories, braver marketing, and more buff, ripped marketing writing with bolder tone of voice.

If there were a 12-Step Program for PowerPoint Recovery, I’d be going to meetings thrice weekly. I tend to build bloated slide decks overstuffed like a post-Thanksgiving gut, with examples of great content and marketing I love.

And then I have a heck of a time killing my darlings.

Because to me they are all precious. And, also, I don’t want to let my marketer-audience down… because what if the exact example I leave out about that one automaker’s effort is exactly the inspiration the marketing manager for Burt’s New and Used Auto needed to see? Can you tell I overthink this stuff?

Luckily, this time around, I’ve worked with my brilliant and talented therapist friend Tamsen Webster at Oratium to help me cull the slide herd. She helped me tossed out the weakling examples in favor of the ones with six-pack abs and muscley hides.

Tamsen is made of stronger stuff that I am—at least when editing slide decks—and she was quite stern on this point:

Your audience can’t absorb much more than one solid story to illustrate each point. Any more than that, she said, is to over-saturate them.

I pictured a waterlogged audience when she said that: people hopelessly forced to absorb more than they are meant to and worse for the wear—the way an iPod that takes a spin through the washing machine needs to dry out for a few days in a pail of rice.

Anyway, Tamsen suggested that I wring out some of the waterlogged bloat by giving details of the examples elsewhere. So that’s what you’re now reading in this post…

Bigger, Bolder, Braver

A bigger story puts your company in the larger context of what people care about.

A bolder marketer upends the status quo, telling a story that hits on specific challenges your audience has (but no one else is talking about in the right way for a certain audience).

Gutsier, braver voice is a differentiator in a sea of mediocre content.

You can use your bigger, bolder, braver content to convert more people into your squad, to align them with your company on a level that’s bigger than what you sell or what you do.

(And not everybody is going to want to be part of your squad. Which is exactly the point.)

Yesterday at Content Marketing World, I shared my favorite examples of three companies that I think kill at this, and how they are doing it. But many more examples of bigger, bolder, braver content wound up on the cutting room floor.

Here are three.

1. MailChimp

Technically, MailChimp is a 14-year-old email marketing service provider (with a cute monkey wearing a cap as its brand avatar). But, really, the MailChimp people help you craft and send marketing email that is less annoying.

Or, as they say (more delicately), right on the homepage: “Send better email.”

It’s a directive. But it’s also a kind of call to arms.

One of the ways they do this is to lean heavily into making their customers smarter. And deeply smarter—and not just by delivering the lightweight “5 Ways to Improve Your Open Rates.”

They partnered with the online learning platform Skillshare and produced a series of engaging video tutorials grouped loosely around (you guessed it) sending better email. More than 14,000 students have taken Getting Started with Email Marketing.

“Our goal is to make people smarter about email,” whether or not they become MailChimp customers, Allyson Van Houten, who teaches the class, told me.

Another way MailChimp gives businesses a gift is by promoting the importance of clear, sharp writing.

I almost wrote “gives its customers a gift” in that last sentence. But the truth is you don’t have to be a MailChimp customer (or even a prospect) to access the MailChimp style guide, which the company created and posted on GitHub in August, making it freely available to anyone who wants to use it as the basis to create a style guide for their own company.

It’s not behind a contact form, so you can access it with zero strings attached: https://github.com/mailchimp/content-style-guide

Takeaway: Make your customers deeply smarter. Give people a reason to join your squad.

2. Casper

This June, startup mattress company Casper borrowed a page from Red Bull (widely known as the media company that happens to sell energy drinks) when Caspar launched a dedicated website—Van Winkle’s—with a bigger content mission: to own the “sleep” category.

“While sleep is of increasing interest to everyone, there is no true authority on the topic,” Luke Sherwin, co-founder and chief creative officer at Casper, told Contently. “We want to own the conversation on sleep and help create sleep and wakefulness as a new editorial category, much like food, shelter, and fitness are now.”

I also love the way Sherwin says great brands “don’t just ride shifts in culture, they contribute to them.”

“Smarter brands in general realize that their products are just enablers to a lifestyle—changing the lifestyle itself can be more profitable than any change to your product,” he told writer Dillon Baker.

I also love the way Casper is investing in hiring professional writers and editors to create content and make Van Winkle’s into a full-fledged publication.

Casper hired Elizabeth Spiers, former editor-in-chief of the New York Observer and founding editor of Gawker.com, to head up the initiative as editorial director. It also hired journalist Jeff Koyen as its editor-in-chief, alongside three other editorial staffers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Takeaway: Be the go-to source for your industry. Tell true stories well.

3. Toyota Mirai, Fueled by Bullshit

The Toyota Mirai is a “hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle,” which simply means that it runs on hydrogen stored in cells similar to rechargeable batteries. I am vastly oversimplifying this concept; if you are a scientist please feel free to mock me to yourself.

Hydrogen is apparently non-polluting, and hydrogen cars have the potential to be fuel-efficient and eco-friendly transportation alternatives to gas-powered vehicles. But a lot of issues still need addressing, some of which Toyota took on squarely in this video to promote its new hydrogen-based vehicle, the Mirai (reportedly Japanese for “future”).

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk had derisively called the technology “bullshit,” claiming it’s a marketing ploy and not a legit long-term solution for cleaner vehicles.

Toyota disagreed. Musk and other critics are right about the cars being “fueled by bullshit,” the narrator here says, “but not in the way they think.”

In other words, Toyota stepped right into the issue, producing a mini documentary to demonstrate how hydrogen can be created, literally, from cow/bull excrement, and to make the case for hydrogen-based cars.

As a result, the story it tells is bigger, bolder, braver.

Until yesterday, I had planned to show this example to the audience. But then my friend Tim Washer told me it would gross the audience out, and I decided he was right. Especially since I was talking just before lunch.

Also, it’s long. And Tamsen said I don’t have 3 minutes to waste on a single video in my talk. (See confessional “12 Step” paragraph, above.)

Takeaway: Don’t shy from the tough issues facing your industry. Run at them, head on. But watch your step. (Ha!)

http://www.annhandley.com/2015/09/10/bigger-braver-bolder-content-marketing-3-examples-from-the-cutting-room-floor-of-my-latest-presentation/

The Most Successful Small Business in the World

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 00:55:00 +0000

Would be good to see some more too!..........

Foodshot:Free Images of Food

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Recently, a new service for free grocery images named Foodshot has launched. The array of photos is still rather negligible; the quality is already high. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Many Photo Platforms, Few Food Images

This undoubtedly took a while. When I created a platform for free grocery pictures in 2008 as a reaction to the wave of problems a popular cookbook website caused, I didn’t set a trend with that. And even when a growing amount of providers brought free images to the web, there were no dedicated food photo providers among them.

Now, finally, there’s Foodshot, a website with Tumblr looks in the style of Unsplash. The site collects high-quality photos, with the only thing they have in common being them displaying victuals.

Foodshot: Free Images Under Creative Commons Zero

All photos are distributed under the license Creative Commons Zero, which is about the same as Public Domain. The result is that the pictures can be used for any legal purpose, and in any way without restrictions. It doesn’t even require you to name the photographer or provide a backlink.

Foodshot is rather basic at the moment. There is no classification system. Neither categories, nor tags, nor search features are available. Photos are displayed in a timeline as a double grid. In contrast to other providers, there is no detail page for the images. Instead, a click on the photo in the grid causes the instant download of it. When hovering over a picture, the only information shown in an overlay is for how long the image is available already. You won’t find information on the photographer, camera, or geo data.

Two Examples of Foodshot’s Quality

Foodshot is very straightforward. While this can work in the current, limited array, it will become quite confusing as soon as Foodshot keeps up the promised growth. Perspectively, the only way of keeping a proper overview is subscribing to their newsletter.

If you prefer a clear array of grocery photos, I can confidently recommend my own project ;-) The provided photos are also under Creative Commons Zero and can be used for any legal purpose without restrictions.

Foodscene, the Creators of Foodshot

Foodshot is presented to you by the creators of Foodscene. Foodscene wants to be some sort of Medium for food topics. I can’t explain what that is supposed to accomplish, but I definitely wish them a lot of success with that. Once again, thanks for Foodshot…

Foodshot is Open for Collaborations

If you want to, you can also submit your own photos to Foodshot. Should their editorial staff like your material, you’ll be able to find it on the platform. However, you need to accept that you won’t receive any attribution by the users, as well as no attribution by the platform that presents them. For me, that would be less of an incentive.

Where do you get grocery photos from when you need them?

http://www.noupe.com/essentials/foodshot-free-food-images-96162.html

Don’t Allow Your Small Business to Be at Risk—A Guide to Choosing Insurance

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 01:00:00 +0000

If you own a small business, you need business insurance. Period. But the type you need can vary widely depending on what your business does.

Don’t make the mistake that many young business owners make and assume that they’re protected simply because they’re incorporated. You need small business insurance. You can still be sued. If you think risks to your business are identifiable and avoidable, then you really don’t understand how business works!

Case in point: although my business is a software business, one of my employees unwittingly caused an explosion at a laundromat, and I almost lost my company because of it.

Before you read any further, you should know I’m not an insurance specialist or even a generalist. I’m simply a battle-hardened entrepreneur who has bought insurance over the years, experienced my fair share of claims, and experienced the fanny-saving powers of insurance firsthand.

In this article, I’m offering a few basic insurance tips for small business owners. Even so, the insurance market is always in flux, and you should consult a good, ethical, and educated insurance broker. The broker will ask you questions about your business and help you find the right small business insurance for you.

From liability insurance to health insurance, here are the basic types of small business insurance in layman’s terms:

Commercial General Liability (CGL) Insurance is intended to protect your business from claims resulting from accidents, injuries, and negligence–these could include libel, slander, property damage, or bodily injury. It may also cover the cost of your defense in a lawsuit. Every small business owner should have this type of insurance.

Product Liability Insurance may give you some protection from safety issues if you manufacture, distribute, or even sell a product via retail or wholesale. It could protect your company from financial loss resulting from a product defect that causes an injury.

Professional Liability Insurance, also known as errors and omissions insurance (E&O), may give your business some protection if you commit any malpractice, errors, or are negligent in the delivery of your services to customers.

Commercial Property Insurance is intended to cover damages to business property from events such as fire, smoke, wind, hail, storms, vandalism, crime, civil disobedience, etc. The phrase “business property” can mean a lot of things. It includes not only your physical assets, which are generally considered deductible business expenses such as buildings, equipment, inventory, tools, computers, etc., but may also include your company’s important documents and files, and the financial cost of a business interruption.

Workers’ Compensation Insurance is a requirement if you have employees. It covers the costs involved if an employee experiences any kind of job-related injury. Check with your insurance broker to see if you must purchase it from a state-run program (i.e., North Dakota, Ohio, Washington, and Wyoming), or if you can buy it from your broker.

Unemployment Insurance is also a requirement if you have employees. This insurance program allows employees to collect unemployment if they stop working for your business. Each state has its own state unemployment insurance coverage which is often referred to as SUI or SUTA, and your tax payments are calculated during the payroll process.

Disability Insurance: If your business is located in California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, or Rhode Island, your business is required to purchase disability insurance for your employees. Check with your insurance broker.

Homeowners Insurance is not intended to cover your business; it’s intended to cover your home. Check with your insurance broker to find out if you can add a rider onto your homeowners policy that may cover some aspects of your home-based business.

Life Insurance is optional insurance that you can purchase to provide cash for your family members and/or business partner(s) if you were to die. It can also provide cash for your business if a key employee dies (e.g., your partner).

Commercial Auto Insurance covers the physical damage and bodily injury caused by accidents involving the vehicles used in your business. Some states require commercial auto insurance for vehicles used in business.

Directors and Officers Insurance (D&O) is liability insurance that is intended to pay for the legal defense for directors or officers of your company against claims that their actions harmed the company.

Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) is intended to pay the defense costs should you be sued by a current or sometimes even a past employee. Reasons you might be sued include wrongful termination, discrimination, sexual harassment, wage and hour claims, etc.

Cyber Liability (aka data breach) covers a business in situations where sensitive data (e.g., business data, employee data, customer data, etc.) is compromised or stolen, or if a business interruption involving computer systems or files occurs.

Personal Umbrella Insurance is an inexpensive all-purpose policy that may offer a little extra protection to a business owner in a variety of situations. I personally like the idea of having a general, catch-all insurance policy that may provide some coverage in areas where nothing else protects you.

Health Insurance may be required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to cover you and your employees. There are many different qualifications that determine the level of coverage you must provide, and the ACA adds another level to the mix. Health care is a complicated can of worms, so you’ll definitely need to consult with an insurance broker.

Again, as a small business owner, you should sit down with your insurance broker (i.e., salesperson or agent) and learn what types of small business insurance policies are needed for your operation.

http://www.allbusiness.com/small-business-guide-choosing-insurance-103895-1.html

Where Did A Million Chinese Millionaires Come From

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:55:00 +0000

Watch this to find out! ........

5 Mobile Apps Every Entrepreneur Should Use

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Today’s entrepreneur has a wealth of information, connectivity and resources available instantly and immediately via the Internet. This level of access has helped spawn a new renaissance for entrepreneurship, as young and experienced entrepreneurs alike find it ever easier to get exactly what they need to create ideas, execute plans and perfect their approaches.

But not all of these tools are widely known. With millions of mobile apps available, how do you know which ones are worth pursuing unless someone points you in the right direction?

I don’t claim to be a mobile app expert, nor have I personally used those millions of apps available to Apple and Android users, but I am an entrepreneur with experience seeking and vetting the tools I need to get my job done efficiently. With that experience, I bring you five apps that every entrepreneur should be using for their business:

1. Evernote

Evernote is massively popular, and there’s a good chance you already use its app in some form. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it, as it remains one of the best tools I’ve ever used for organizing my thoughts, insights and plans. Manifesting either as a desktop tool or a mobile app, Evernote is the perfect note-taking system. With a variety of tools that perform searches, create to-do lists and sync your devices, you can instantly turn any meeting into an instantly organized bundle of only the most important takeaways. Also worth mentioning is Skitch: It’s technically a separate app, but because it’s made by the people at Evernote, it can be conveniently added here. Skitch helps you use annotations, brief notes and even sketches to jot down the gist of multiple ideas for later use.

2. Free WiFi Finder

If you’re like me, you’re constantly on the go, running back and forth from home to office, to clients, to offsite meetings and other random errands. As an entrepreneur, you’re forced to do work whenever you find a spare moment. And with today’s technology, that’s no great obstacle, but you still need a place with fast, free WiFi. That’s where Free WiFi Finder comes in. If an app ever delivered on exactly what it promises to do, it’s this one. Using your current location, the app generates a convenient map showing all the locations around you, from Starbucks to airports, which offer free WiFi. Of course, in many cases, that “free” comes only after you make an initial purchase, but that’s hardly a deal breaker.

3. Uber

If you aren’t taking advantage of Uber for your business, the time to start is now. Essentially functioning as a peer-to-peer taxi service, Uber gets you wherever you need to go around the city. If you’re a startup and have limited access to funds, Uber X offers low-key transport for an inexpensive price. It also offers a black car service you can use to show up to a meeting where you really need to make an impression. And you can send a ride to someone else, should you need to bring a client to your office, for example. It's like a limo service, but much cheaper. Lyft, a competitor of Uber’s, is also worth mentioning.

4. MobileDay

Few entrepreneurs work exclusively in an office setting. You’ll be working from home, coffee shops, client locations and other remote locales. MobileDay is there to make sure, despite your absence from the office, that you don’t miss any important meetings. It organizes all your plans, notifies you when it’s time to join a meeting and even offers one-click functionality to let you call in. If you’re running late, the app actually offers you the ability to send other attendees a note that you won’t make it on time.

5. Pocket.

I’ll describe Pocket as the world’s best bookmarking app. When active, Pocket can help you bookmark all kinds of content, from articles to images and videos, and sync that information across multiple devices so you can access it later. If you’re too busy to read an article, or you’re simply interested in giving it a more thorough reading at a later date, this app is awesome. As an entrepreneur, information and content are critical to your business’ survival, and this app makes sure you never miss an opportunity.

These apps won’t turn a flop into a million-dollar idea, nor will they ever fully automate your job, but they should at least help you stay organized, save you time and increase the efficiency of your everyday work. With those improvements in place, you should find yourself with fewer mistakes, fewer worries, and a lot more time on your hands, freeing you up to be the leader you want to be.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/270466

Top10 Must Have WordPress Blogging Plugins

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Whether you’re new to blogging or you’ve been doing it for a while (like me), having the right blogging plugins on your WordPress site can really help make creating and marketing blog posts a little easier. It seems like everyday I’m learning about a new awesome plugin.

Not to mention plugins are what’s great about using WordPress. You have access to an arsenal of great apps with thousands of them being free. So in this post, I want to give my top 10 must have WordPress blogging plugins that can boost your blogging and make your life a whole lot easier.

1. Tweet Old Post

When I found out about Tweet Old Post, I was doing the happy dance. I already love, love, love Twitter and now with this “set it and forget it” plugin I no longer need to manually share my previously written posts. This plugin will create and send a Twitter post of your previously published articles from last week, last month or even last year.

In the settings, you customize how old you want the posts to be, which category to include or exclude and how often you want the plugin to share a blog post. It’s absolutely awesome! The first day I added this plugin to my blog, my site visitors increased by 50%. I know, right! So, if you’ve never heard of this free plugin, then check it out at Tweet Old Post.

2. WordPress SEO by Yoast

This plugin takes care of the technical SEO optimization for you. You simply add your target keyword to the plugin keyword field and the plugin does the rest. The plugin provides a green, yellow or red indicator light to tell you how your blog post has been SEO optimized.

The plugin counts the number of times the focus keyword phrase was used and ensures that you’ve used it in all the right places. Grab the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.

3. Editorial Calendar

The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.

If you have topic ideas, you can create an entry in the calendar and save it as a draft. Then you can write the blog post when you are ready. In my previous post, 21 Days To Better Blogging – Day 3: Editorial Calendar, I explain how important an editorial calendar is to the success of your blog. My company provides a blogging editorial calendar for each of our clients to ensure that we are preparing keyword focused blog posts and staying on schedule. Get the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin.

4. Akismet

For those who have been blogging for a while, I’m sure you’ve experienced spam comments. I can’t tell you how many comments I receive on a daily basis from spammers trying to comment about Nike shoes or Viagra. And you definitely don’t want these types of comments on your blog. For this reason is why it’s always a good idea to moderate your comments. Years ago, I had my comments set to automatically approve. Unfortunately, some inappropriate comments got posted to my blog. That was not a good situation.

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. Visit https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet to grab your Akismet plugin.

5. Hello Bar

Looking for a way to grab your reader’s attention without using a pop-up opt in box? Then Hello Bar is the right fit. Hello Bar is easy to setup and customize with your site’s color scheme. It places a call to action or opt in bar at the top of your blog. This is sure to grab your reader’s eye. Hello Bar also integrates with email campaign tools such as Aweber and Mail Chimp. Visit HelloBar.com to set up your opt in bar.

6. What Would Seth Godin Do

This plugin takes Seth Godin’s idea of differentiating between new and returning visitors. New visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!” After 5 visits the message disappears. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. The message can be excluded from certain pages if desired. Download the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin here.

7. Google XML Sitemap

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content. Get this plug at http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator.

8. ShareThis

Writing great blog posts isn’t enough. You need to ensure that your message is circulating through social media sites. One way to entice readers to share your blog posts with their friends and followers on social media is to add social sharing buttons to your blog posts. The Share This plugin provides posting to 120 social channels. Grab your plugin at https://wordpress.org/plugins/share-this.

9. Only Wire

Only Wire is similar to the Share This plugin BUT it will also automatically share your blog posts to your social networks as well as social bookmarking sites. I just love “set it and forget it” type of applications. Sharing your blog posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon is just as (if not more) important as sharing the to social media sites. Install Only Wire and start sharing.

10. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is one of the best contact forms available for WordPress. What makes Gravity Forms so great? The power of its integrations. Gravity Forms integrates with Mail Chimp, Aweber, and Paypal just to name a few. So you can provide a checkout process on your blog and then have the contact information feed directly to your email marketing campaign.

Gravity Forms starts at $39 for one site. The next level at $99 provides the plugin for up to 3 sites as well as the basic add-ons such as Aweber, Paypal, etc. Learn more about Gravity Forms.

Well, there you have it. These are my top picks of blogging plugins to ensure you have a successful blog. Visit the sites above and see if these plugins are a perfect fit for your blog.

http://cindybuccieri.com/top-10-must-wordpress-blogging-plugins/

Success Metics In A World Without Twitter Share Counts

noreply@blogger.com (Vanessa Greenfield) — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 01:00:00 +0000

On November 20, 2015, Twitter took away share counts on their buttons and from their accessible free metrics. Site owners lost an easy signal of popularity of their posts. Those of us in the web metrics business scrambled to either remove, change, or find alternatives for the data to serve to our customers. And all those share count buttons, on sites across the Web, started looking a tad ugly:

Yep, this is a screenshot from our own site.

Why did Twitter take away this data?

When asked directly, Twitter's statement about the removal of tweet counts has consistently been:

"The Tweet counts alone did not accurately reflect the impact on Twitter of conversation about the content. They are often more misleading to customers than helpful."

On the whole, I agree with Twitter that tweet counts are not a holistic measurement of actual audience engagement. They aren't the end-all-be-all to showing your brand's success on the channel or for the content you're promoting. Instead, they are part of the puzzle — a piece of engagement.

However, if Twitter were really concerned about false success reports, they would've long ago taken away follower counts, the ultimate social media vanity metric. Or taken strong measures to block automated accounts and follower buying. Not taking action against shallow metrics, while "protecting" users from share counts, makes their statement ring hollow.

OMG, did Twitter put out an alternative?

About a year ago, Twitter acquired Gnip, an enterprise metrics solution. Gnip mostly looks to combine social data and integrate it into a brand's customer reputation management software, making for some pretty powerful intelligence about customers and community members. But since it's focused on an enterprise audience, it's priced out of the reach of most brands. Plus, the fact that it's served via API means brands must have the knowledge and development skills/talent in order to really customize the data.

Since the share count shutdown, Gnip released a beta Engagement API and has promised an upcoming Audience API. This API seems to carry all the data you'd need to put those share counts back together. However, an important note:

"Currently only three metrics are available from the totals endpoint: Favorites, Replies, and Retweets. We are working to make Impressions and Engagements available."

For those of you running to your favorite tools — Gnip's TOS currently forbids the reselling of their data, making it essentially forbidden to integrate into tools, although some companies like Buzzsumo have paid and gotten permission to use the data in their software. The share count removal caused Apple to quietly kill Topsy.

Feel social media's dark side, Twitter

Killing share counts hasn't been without its damage to Twitter as a brand. In his post about brands who's lost and won in Google search, Dr. Pete Meyers notes that Twitter dropped from #6 to #15. That has to hurt their traffic.

However, Twitter also made a deal with Google in order to show tweets directly in Google searches, which means Twitter's brand may not be as damaged as it appears.

Perhaps the biggest ding to Twitter is in their actual activity and sharing articles on their platform. Shareaholic reports sharing on Twitter is down 11% since the change was implemented.

It's hard to sell Twitter as a viable place to invest social media time, energy, and money when there's no easy proof in the pudding. You might have to dig further into your strategy and activities for the answers.

Take back your Twitter metrics!

The bad news: Almost none of these metrics actually replicate or replace the share count metric. Most of them cover only what you tweet, and they don't capture the other places your content's getting shared.

The good news: Some of these are probably better metrics and better goals.

Traffic to your site

Traffic may be an oldie, but it's a goodie. You should probably already be tracking this. And please don't just use Google Analytics' default settings, as they're probably slightly inaccurate.

Some defaults for one of my blogs, since I'm lazy.

Instead, make sure you tag what you're sharing on social media and you'll be better able to attribute your hard, hard work to the proper channels. Then you can really figure out if Twitter is the channel for your brand's content (or if you're using it right).

Use shortening services and their counters

Alternatively, especially if you're sharing content not on your own site, you can use share and click counting from various URL shortening services. But this will only count toward individual links you share.

Twitter's own free analytics

No, you won't find the share count here, either. Twitter's backends are pretty limited to specific stats on individual tweets and some audience demographics. It can be especially challenging if you have multiple accounts and are working with a team. There is the ability to download reporting for further Excel wizardry.

Twitter's engagement metric is "the number of engagements (clicks, retweets, replies, follows, and likes) divided by the total number of impressions." While this calculation seems like a good idea, it's not my favorite, given the specific calculation's hard to scale as you grow your audience. You're always going to have more lurkers instead of people engaging with your content, and it's going to take a lot of massaging of metric reporting when you explain how you grew your audience and those numbers went down. Or how the company with 100 followers does way better on Twitter's engagement metric.

TrueSocialMetric's engagement numbers

Now these are engagement metrics that you can scale, grow, and compare. Instead of looking at impressions, TrueSocialMetrics gives conversation, amplification, and applause rates for your social networks. This digs into the type of engagement you're having. For example, your conversation rate for Twitter is calculated by taking how many comments you got and dividing it by how many times you tweeted.

At Moz, we use a combination of TrueSocialMetrics and traffic to report on the success of our social media efforts to our executives. We may use other metrics internally for testing or for other needs, depending on that specific project.

Twitcount

Shortly after the removal of share counts was announced, Twitcount popped up. It works by installing their share counters on your site, where it then can surface historical totals. Twitcount's numbers only start counting the day you install the code and the button to your site. There are limitations, since they use Twitter's API, and these limitations may cause data inaccuracies. I haven't used their solution, but if you have, let us know in the comments how it went!

Buffer's reach and RT metrics

Again, this only counts for your individual tweet's metrics, and Buffer only grabs metrics on tweets sent out via their platform. Buffer's reach metric is similar to what many traditional advertisers and people in public relations are used to, and it is similar to Twitter's general impressions metric. Reach looks at how far your tweet has possibly gone due to size of the retweeter's audience.

Like most analytic tools, you can export the metrics and play with them in Excel. Or you can pay for Buffer's business analytics, which runs between $50–$250/month.

Buzzsumo

Our friends at Buzzsumo can be used as a Topsy topic replacement and share counter. They did a great write-up on how to use their tool for keyword research. They are providing share counts from Gnip's data.

Though when I ran some queries on Moz's blog posts, there seemed to be a big gap in their share counts. While we'd expect to see Moz's counts down a bit on the weekends, there would be something there:

I'm unsure if this is Buzzsumo's or Gnip's data issue. It's also possibly that there are limits on the data, especially since Moz has large numbers of followers and gets large amounts of shares on our posts.

Use Fresh Web Explorer's Mention Authority instead

While Fresh Web Explorer's index only covers recent data — the tool's main function being to find recent mentions of keywords around the web a la Google Alerts — it can be helpful if you're running a campaign and relying on instant data no older than a month. Mention Authority does include social data. (Sorry, the full formula involved with creating the score is one of Moz's few trade secrets.) What's nice about this score is that it's very analogous across different disciplines, especially publicity campaigns, and can serve as a holistic alternative.

Embedded tweets for social proof

Stealing this one from our friends at Buffer, but if you're looking to get social proof back for people visiting your post, embedded tweets can work well. This allows others to see that your tweet about the post was successful, perhaps choosing to retweet and share with their audience.

Obviously, this won't capture your goals to hand to a boss. But this will display some success and provide an easy share option for people to retweet your brand.

Predictions for the future of Twitter's share count removal

Twitter will see this as a wash for engagement

With the inclusion of tweets directly in Google search results, it balances out the need for direct social proof. That said, with the recent timeline discussions and other changes, people are watching Twitter for any changes, with many predicting the death of Twitter. (Oh, the irony of trending hashtags when #RIPTwitter is popular.)

Twitter may not relent fully, but it may cheapen the product through Gnip. Alternatively, it may release some kind of "sample" share count metric instead. Serving up share count data on all links certainly costs a lot of money from a technical side. I'm sure this removal decision was reached with a "here's how much money we'll save" attached to it.

Questions about Twitter's direction as a business

For a while, Twitter focused itself on being a breaking news business. At SMX East in 2013, Twitter's Richard Alfonsi spoke about Twitter being in competition with media and journalism and being a second screen while consuming other media.

Lack of share counts, however, make it hard for companies to prove direct value. (Though I'm sure there are many advertisers wanting only lead generation and direct sales from the platform.) Small businesses, who can't easily prove other value, aren't going to see an easy investment in the platform.

Not to mention that issues around harassment have caused problems even celebrities with large followings like Sue Perkins (UK comedian), Joss Whedon (director and producer), Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin Williams), and Anne Wheaton (wife of Wil Wheaton). This garners extremely bad publicity for the company, especially when most were active users of Twitter.

No doubt Twitter shareholders are on edge when stock prices went down and the platform added a net of 0 new users in Q4 of 2015. Is the removal of share counts something in the long list of reasons why Twitter didn't grow in Q4? Twitter has made some big revenue and shipping promises to shareholders in response.

Someone will build a tool to scrape Twitter and sell share counts.

When Google rolled out (not provided), every SEO software company clamored to make tools to get around it. Since Gnip data is so expensive, it's pretty impractical for most companies. The only way to actually build this tool would be to scrape all of Twitter, which has many perils. Companies like Hootsuite, Buffer, and SproutSocial are the best set up to do it more easily, but they may not want to anger Twitter.

What are your predictions for Twitter's future without share counts? Did you use the share counts for your brand, and how did you use them? What will you be using instead?

https://moz.com/blog/success-metrics-in-a-world-without-twitter-share-counts